


Nobody Wants To Help Him

by the_rainbow_suspenders



Category: Original Work
Genre: Agony, Bubonic Plague, Canon: Marc Octave Dies Alone, Coughing, Dimension H, Grief/Mourning, Lonely Death, Octave Asylum, Original Character Death(s), Pain, Plague, The Black Death, The Crimson Lung, Time to kill my characters so I don't kill myself ha, tuberculosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 03:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12645594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rainbow_suspenders/pseuds/the_rainbow_suspenders
Summary: If you ever stumble across Dimension H on March 7, 2084, don't go to New York. Don't go into the mansion. He doesn't want you here. He doesn't want company.





	Nobody Wants To Help Him

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy.

If you ever find yourself in Manhattan, New York and you head downtown, you find that it's a little run down but still decent- not advanced yet as there's hardly any electricity if there's electricity at all. The streets are cobblestone and the shops are small. There's a tavern between two deep alleyways and a large park across the street.

If you walk for long enough across the area, you find a mansion at the end of the strip, crimson in color with a black roof and six or seven stories tall, hand-built by its only resident.

In that mansion, through the bolted front door and down the long hallway that passes the kitchen, the den, the dining room, and the library, is a long red-carpeted staircase. If you decide to travel up them, you must be careful. Watch your step. Watch your back...

Once you get to the top, you look around. It's one way, you have to go forward. Down the long dark hall lined with locked doors, passing the lifeless shell of a small, armless robot, you'll find a room. A bedroom to be exact, and if you open the door, you see that everything is caked in dust and dirt and rust and a heavy layer of sorrow. The room feels heavy. Thick red velvet curtains are drawn over every window and pinned shut. There is no sunlight. The only aid to sight is coming from the soft glow of a small oil lamp by the door. Its flame flickers, threatening to burn out at any second. Its wick is down to the end and its tainted glass oil-dish is dangerously low. It's no big luminosity but it was enough.

You're able to see that the walls are painted a deep crimson and the hardwood floor is covered by a large black rug. It's rough from years of neglect, the fibers stiff and scratchy.

The room smells old. Like rotting wood and chalk and medicine, like century-aged parchment and the slightest bit of flowery perfume.

In the left corner of the room are several rusty IV stands atop a carpet of emptied medical bags and used needles. A large red plush chair sits at the right side of the room. It's dusty, nobody's sat in it for years. Beside the chair is a closed door. Just a bathroom. Diagonal to that door is a large walk-in closet. The clothes are men's, mainly black and red, but there's a single purple coat on-hanger. It's double-breasted high-low with broad shoulders, the chest embellished with four dull green gems, a darker purple silk lining the inside. It hasn't been worn in years.

Parallel to the door is a large bed against the wall with two small mahogany tables on either side. On the left table is an oxygen mask; the brown leather strap is worn and broken, the glass is cloudy and covered in copious amounts of green mold and splatters of dried blood, and the inside of the tube connecting it to a run down clockwork machine sitting on the floor is now speckled with black spots. Empty pill bottles dated back to the 1900s, used shot vessels, and more needles accompany the mask. Draped over the surface of the table on the right is a sheer blue hip-scarf decorated with gold coins and orange tassels, seemingly untouched by time.

The bed is old and creaky; its sheets are black and silky, its comforter red and warm. It's meant for two but in that bed there's only one. The second departed many years ago...

If you get close enough, you can see him.

He's pale. His skin is the color of sick. Disgusting. It's green and grey and the nastiest yellow. The black sores that speckle his skin and his cracked, blood stained lips warn you of his illnesses. He's missing an eye- the left one to be exact, it looks like it's rotted away along with some of the skin around its socket. His jaw-length hair is neon green with strands of silver and stringy, greasy from neglecting to shower. His face is sunken. He probably hasn't left his room in a while, meaning he probably hasn't eaten for quite some time.

It's a miracle he's survived this long.

He opens his eye. It's neon green, like his hair, with a long snake-like pupil and bloodshot sclera. It's dull. It's tired. The hollow shell of a once-handsome man.

If you get too close, he hisses at you, baring his sharp teeth.

How could someone so weak and helpless be so terrifying? He couldn't hurt you but you can feel his single eye glaring daggers into your skull as you look around. You try to take another step closer but the hisses become enraged growls, getting more aggressive by the second until he breaks into a coughing fit. He hunches in on himself, clawing at his chest with all his available strength as droplets of blood escape his pale, cracked lips and his ribs threaten to cave in with each lung-wrenching hack. 

He's sick. He's so so sick...

His vomit-dissolved throat burns with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. His head is pounding through a chronic brain throb, there's a steam hammer in his chest, his joints ache, his skin hurts, his blood feels like hot lead oozing through his veins.

He can feel the diseases eating away at his insides, stripping his body of every nutrient it needs to survive.

He lays there.

Everything is gone... He needs to go too...

He gasps. It's so painful, the cold air burning in his chest like the fiery depths of hell. He cries out with one last agonizing lurch of his blood-filled lungs, a watery scream bubbling up from his windpipe.

You leave quickly, you look for help.

The old bartender glares at you but the patrons think you're hilarious. The shopkeepers think you're drunk, the restaurant owners think you should leave, and the citizens think you're an escaped mental patient.

Nobody wants to help him.

Nobody wants to help him...

 

 

 

Two weeks later the headline shows up in the paper. You're sitting in your cell and you overhear one of the white-coats reading the paper aloud.

Doctor Marc Octave had finally died.

Nobody wanted to help him...

**Author's Note:**

> I feel somewhat better having written this and I'm going to delete the beginning rant because I feel guilty for ranting.


End file.
